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boat.

    "When do you think it will come?" Mrs Kung whispered.

    "I don't know," Mrs Pa replied.

    Along the edge of the wharf the marriage broker and her assistants had placed long tubes of incense, which flared and smoldered in the damp air. They had lit a fire in a stout iron brazier, sending a stream of sparks into the water. The broker pranced and stamped about the wharf, wheeling and clapping her hands to ward off undesirables, and occasionally striking a small, fringed drum. The amulets tied around the edges of her shawl danced with her.

    "Such a lot of energy!" marveled Mrs Kung. A few faint stars rose above the city mists. There was no moon tonight. Water lapped against the wharf, loud in the sudden silence. The broker fell silent.

    A junk was sailing up the sooty waters of the harbor, stealing into port. Its sails were as red as a hibiscus blossom, ragged and burning in the ship's own light. Phosphorescence trailed in its wake, a black lantern hung from its prow. From the wan illumination that it shed, the junk's name appeared briefly on its side: Precious Dragon, just as Mai had said. Next to Mrs Pa, the broker threw back her head and gave a long, thin cry. Mrs Pa craned her neck, trying to get a glimpse of her daughter, and then the junk was sidling against the dock. The broker threw a sudden handful of firecrackers onto the brazier. There was a series of startling explosions, and as the fire flared, Mrs Pa saw her child's pale face smiling over the edge of the deck. Mrs Pa had not actually set eyes on Mai for thirty years, since the cholera epidemic that had taken, in one long night, her husband and her three-year-old daughter, but she would have known Mai anywhere. She jumped up and down, calling excitedly, and beside Mai, the bridegroom beamed.

    "Hurry!" cried the broker, and Mrs Pa and the Kung family hastily bundled all the wedding presents from their scarlet envelopes and threw them into the blaze. The little gifts went first: sweets, crackers, and cookies vanished into the fire before raining down on the deck of the junk. Then as the fire caught, the proper gifts followed. Flat paper chairs and tables, a handsome parchment bed, the paper stove and pots and pans, everything for the young couple, were consumed by the flames. They would go to the new house, to which Mai and her husband would return. Then the two families threw the money onto the fire, each note bearing the smiling face of the demonic banker and a fine representation of the Bank of Hell. The people on the junk were briefly obscured in a shower of banknotes, falling like leaves around their feet. At last it was over. The broker clapped her hands and banged the little drum. Mrs Pa saw Mai wince, and gave a sympathetic wave. The tide began to turn.

    "Goodbye, Mother!" and "Phone me!"

    Mrs Pa and her pale daughter cried, and then Precious Dragon's silhouette crew cast off and the sails of the junk caught the incense wind and streamed out, carrying the dead beyond the western darkness, out of sight.

     

Six
    Chen sat toward the end of the table in the restaurant, trying to catch Zhu Irzh's eye. The demon, who sat opposite, was concentrating on the dissection of his squid. At the head of the table, Captain Sung droned on, reciting endless statistics about the decline in the crime rate, what a success the previous year had been, how the murder rate had dropped by fifteen percent . . .

    Mind numbing. And also wrong, because the city's crime stats were massaged ad nauseam depending on the requirements of Singapore Three's governor, and in any case, all the data had been hopelessly skewed over the course of the last few months as a result of the disasters that had hit the city. With so many dead, a few of them had to be criminals. But here they were, with Zhu Irzh along as well in order to demonstrate the success of the police department's equal ops policy, for Sung to show off in front of the governor.

    Without the equal ops fad, neither Chen